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2012 Millennium Disney World Cup

Coming into the Millennium Series Disney World Cup many of the division series titles were on the line with only a few points to spare among the top teams. Promotions and relegations were also on the line. The final event of the 2012 Millennium Series was set almost two weeks later than normal due to a conflict with the NPPL World Championships Las Vegas event. And for the first time in many years Mother Nature was not happy with the change. Thursday and Friday of the event turned out to be partly cloudy but on Saturday the skies opened up that left the fields and players facing a new challenge. Sunday would be no different as a steady rain progressed the entire day until just before the awards ceremony.

The final event of the season for the Millennium Series has always been a huge event with more teams showing up than any other of the series events. For some teams this is the only event they attend, somewhat of a goodbye to summer outing. With sixty D3 teams and 56 D2 teams the Millennium would add a 5th field to provide for ample time in the scheduling to play all the games. For this final event the Millennium Series would debut their new webcast, Mtv (Millennium Series TV) provided by the same company that has been successfully doing the webcast for the German DPL series.

A ”new” format would be added to this event. The Classic Division (formerly called Masters) would add yet another field to the growing event. This division would consist of a four-man team with a double center buzzer and a 10 minute running game time. The only restriction on this is the players had to be at least 35 years old. Eight teams would participate in the event with Paris TonTons Acyd taking the first ever championship for this division. The fields were provided by Sup Air and resembled days of old wooden bunkers.

In addition to the Classic division Disney World Cup would be the final event of the European Championships with the U19 Championships. Last year’s Russian youth team was ready to defend their title. They would have several new teams to contend with before taking home the gold. Two teams stood in Team Russia’s way—Team UK and Team Austria. Team UK would take the gold after beating Team Austria 4-0 and Team Russia would have to settle for the Bronze after beating Team France 4-1

After London it looked as though Dynasty would take the season crown for the CPL division but would have to come into the finals in order to take the series. Art Chaos had other plans. They had not come to Paris in hopes of winning but to win. On the average there was only about twenty-five points between each of the top four teams – Dynasty, Art Chaos, TonTons and Instinct. Paris was different in many ways for the teams. Normally the CPL teams did not start until after lunch, but due to the massive amount of teams CPL teams would start playing in the early morning. All games for Paris would begin at 7:30am sharp, again due to the number of teams. Dynasty started out the event with two losses on the first day. It would be quite tough for them to move on if the didn’t win on Saturday. Art Chaos would win both of their matches on Friday. Instinct also was on a roll as their pool had only two teams for them to actually match up against since GI Montreal had pulled out of the series after Bitburg giving each team in that pool a bye for the prelims. Instinct would win one match and have the forfeit from GI moving into Saturday’s games. TonTons and Icon were making a good run in the final grouping of the CPL teams. Saturday would be a make or break time for most teams. Amsterdam Heat had their best showing all season so far in this event. The results from this event would see if they would be relegated to SPL or would remain in CPL one more season. Going into Saturday’s matches the rain began to pour down in buckets making it quite hard to even know if you were shooting your teammate or the other team. The paint covered field became a sheet of water and paint turning it into a skating rink. Many players would slide into their bunkers and could not put the brakes on quick enough and would either be shot out or slide out of bounds. The field quickly became quite dangerous to play on. The marshals now had an even harder time to make sure hits were hits and checking to see if players were playing on. Over the course of two days play Dynasty would receive eight penalties out of nine points played. Art Chaos continued to roll on and easily made the Sunday club. Dynasty’s final match would be against Ranger Warsaw, another penalty riddled match. At one point Ranger had started with three players against Dynasty’s five. In the course of a few seconds Ranger had methodically eliminated Dynasty player after Dynasty player. Dynasty threw the towel when it was just Greenspan and Vanderbyl left on the field. This however was not enough fuel for Ranger to win. But with just one win and not enough point margin Dynasty would not move into the Sunday club giving Art Chaos the series title. Just because they had won the series didn’t mean Art Chaos was done fighting, they wanted to win it all this weekend. Art Chaos would face Frankfurt Syndicate in the semi’s as Instinct would face Breakout Spa. Art Chaos quickly took care of Syndicate and would move on into the finals. Instinct beat Spa and what would become a rematch of the Bitburg Semi’s between Art Chaos and Instinct. In a nail-biting tense game the time ended with a 3-3 tie and would go into overtime. However Art Chaos would be the team that was more hungry for the win and would take the sudden death point over Instinct to win Disney World Cup. Syndicate would win over Breakout Spa to take 3rd for the event. Amsterdam Heat’s 6th place finish in Paris would spare them the axe and would remain in CPL to fight another season. Ranger Warsaw and Lisbon Benifica would be relegated to SPL.

The SPL division was nearly as close as the CPL divisions in regards to promotions and relegations. Dogs D’Amor were on the hunt for a CPL spot and were running neck and neck with Polar Bears Tarko Sale. A good result in this event would give them that all important spot they had been trying to get for the past two seasons. Polar Bears were on a hot streak winning the Bitburg and London events and due to their 24th place finish in St. Tropez would put them in a nearly tie score with Dogs. All three teams were winning their games on the first day and looked as if they would be moving right along into the top 16. Manchester Firm had struggled all season with their new promotion into SPL after winning D1 in 2011. There was less than 15 points difference between them, Freestyle Moscow and a trip back to D1 after this event. FiveStar Lleida had struggled all season long and had made it to the Sunday club twice in top 16 and top 8. Once more the Spanish team would see the Sunday club – top 16. One by one the teams were eliminated to where the once sixteen teams became eight and the eight became four. Polar Bears Tarko Sale had not lost one single game all weekend. They along with Vision were on fire!. Going into the semis it would be two Russian teams facing off as Polar Bears faced Moscow Silents Lite (powered by RL players and American RL player Marcell Margott) and Dogs D’Amour facing Vision. Polar Bears would easily win over their Russian counterparts and would face Vision for the finals leaving Dogs to face Silents Lite. Dogs needed the win to make it into the CPL division next season. And win they did, but would it be enough? Meanwhile Polar Bears would continue their winning streak and stop Vision from winning the 2012 Disney World Cup. It would not taken so hard by Vision as they had already won the SPL series for 2012 giving them one of the two spots in the CPL for 2013. The next question would be who would be the second team to earn their spot in the CPL for 2013? After scores were calculated (twice even) it would be Polar Bears going into CPL next season beating out Dogs D’Amor by two points. Four SPL teams would be relegated to D1 after Paris: Manchester Firm, Dynamix Metz, Undertakers Liege and 2EasyWarsaw.

Over in Division 1 Izmir Collision was continuing their destructive path through top D1 teams. Not dropping a game all weekend. With one 2nd place win and two 1st place wins Izmir was on course to take the 2012 D1 series championships and be promoted to SPL in 2013. Team by team fell victim to Izmir, RMG, ML Kings and Gold Coast Djion. It seemed as if nothing could stop Izmir as they downed Gold Coast Djion and ML Kings sent RMG down to fight for 3rd and 4th place. ML Kings wouldnt go down without a fight but Izmir was just too much for them and would have to settle for 2nd place as Izmir took both Disney World Cup win and D1 2012 series championship. RMG would take 3rd winning over Gold Coast. However a twist to the finals would be all four teams would be promoted to SPL in 2013 and would be meeting each other again during the next season!

The Division 2 race was not as close as other divisions. Series leader Aggression the Hague would not make it into the semis however would still take the series title and move up to D1. Joining Aggression would be NPP Vlaenciennes who would end up in 13th place for this event but still with enough series points to give them 3rd place overall. The excitement for the weekend would come down to four teams: Scorpions Milano, Elite Ile d’ Oleron, Bullitproof Monkeys Strangnas and Bramble Incredi Knights. It would be a battle of Scandinavian teams when it would be Knights vs Bullitproof Monkeys. It would be a tight game ending in a tie taking them into overtime. In overtime the two teams fought hard to get that sudden death point but once more time ran out. Enter the rarely used ranking rule, 33.01 in the current Millennium Series rule book. It states that in the event that in overtime if neither team scores instead of taking a second 5 minute overtime match the winner would be decided by seeding rank. In the case of Knights versus Bullitproof Monkey’s it would be Knights taking the win since the team had participated in every event this season giving them a higher ranking overall. They would go on to face Scorpions Milano and sending Bullitproof to play Elite Ile d’ Oleron. After the smoke from the ranking rule cleared it would be the victorious Scorpions Milano taking first place, the youth team Knights taking second. Bullitproof would take home 3rd and Elite would take home fourth. With the win for Scorpions they would be the third team moving on to D1 next season and 2nd place overall for the season.

With more than 60 teams in Division 3 it would take some time to get down to the final four teams. London Tigers 3 with Canadian guest player Tanis Italia went from a 34th place finish in London to an amazing 1st place finish here in Paris. French team Furious Sneek would take 2nd place. GFY Evolution Paris once more made their appearance on the podium taking 3rd and Meteor Auvers taking home 4th. For the 2nd year in a both GFY Evolution Paris teams would take home series title trophies. This year it would be GFY Evolution Paris 2 in first place and their parent team GFY Evolution Paris taking 2nd place. Maxs Family Frankfurt 2 would take home third place for the season followed by Evil Men Toulouse.

Once more the season came to a close at the magical world of Euro Disney. Teams slowly cleared out of the venue saying goodbye to friends that they see only during the season. Some were off to celebrate their trophies while others were heading back to pack and go home. The Millennium Series left all with a sense of hope for the next season and a sense of anticipation of where we would land for the first event next season and when the dates would be released. Rumors have it that there would be five events in 2013. After the end of last season the 2012 season dates and venues were announced in December giving way to many other series to be able to set their dates. We can only hope that the Millennium will repeat this in December.